Welcome to Part 3 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to start generating more traffic is post great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this article, we discuss the configuration stage of the traffic system. You will learn what makes an expertly configured site different than a professionally configured site, and just what type of work needs to be done to make sure that when everything is fully set up and configured, new traffic will automatically start flowing when you add fresh content on your web site.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration
The ability to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most website owners as their greatest challenge online. With business becoming increasingly more competitive on a global scale, it’s worth looking into any opportunity you can to increase your own competitiveness online.
Being able to generate traffic on demand is a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For WordPress users, having an expertly configured website allows their business to get off to a flying start as soon as their website is launched.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to take advantage of everything WordPress has to offer.
Here’s a simple way to explain the main difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a professional web presence with online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured website gives you a web presence with an automated online business marketing system!)
Not only is extra work required to build and integrate an automated online business marketing process into your website, but also a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with an amusing little story.
A Semi-True Story …
Things were going fine in the gizmo-making factory when everything suddenly came to a halt.
No one could figure out what has happened and so the floor manager decided to call in an expert.
Shortly after arriving, the expert headed out directly to the control box. After staring at the box for 2 minutes, the expert then took out a little hammer and made a very gentle tap near the left side of the unit.
Immediately, everything started working again.
The plant manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left just as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager received a service bill for $5,000.
The factory manager called the expert, demanding to know why the expert had charged them such an exorbitant fee for less than 5 minutes work. He then requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice notice arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he saw:
The main challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive web traffic to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one in the business had the expertise to fix it? Did the expert not have the right to ask to be compensated fairly for investing years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and repair a costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP blog set up and configured so all you ever had to do is publish new content and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and dozens of other traffic-generating online properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your website?)
While experts often make difficult solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site is more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few basic settings. It requires knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things such as:
- Which programs you need to install for specific things to occur on your site.
- Which third-party accounts you need to set up to achieve specific outcomes
- Which settings you need to configure to make sure things work as envisioned, etc.
(Driving new traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This part of the traffic automation system is not technically difficult, but it’s quite involved and time-consuming. It’s not as easy as installing a plugin, clicking a button, or configuring some options and settings in your dashboard area … it’s all this and much more.
Expertly configuring your website involves the integration of various different components such as your web server, your WordPress site, and a number of third-party sites and/or online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If the steps involved in the configuration process were to be flowcharted, it would look something like this …
(A simplified flowchart showing the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at these areas in more detail.
Your Web Server
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web-hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is fine-tuning settings in your server that affect how your site will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, security threats, bot-hacking attempts, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is all about evaluating your needs, planning for both good and unwanted traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This could include looking at things like spam protection and security threat prevention, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up 404 redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step of the configuration phase is to set up a number of third-party sites.
Integration With External Solutions
The basic idea of adding external sites is that all content will be posted to one central location (your site) and from there, it will get distributed automatically to other parts of your web traffic system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
After incorporating these external services into your traffic network, content pointing back to your website gets automatically posted to these platforms, indexed by search engines and distributed to social sites, even to users of the platform itself. Your content and website benefits from exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these external sites and solutions will need to be set up before configuring your settings to help speed up the configuration process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of useful information, SEO tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your Google Webmaster Tools account, this information can be used with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s results, SEO, marketing campaigns, and more, by tracking all user engagement, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account is set up, you can add traffic monitoring information to all of your web pages in WordPress using a simple Google Analytics plugin and feed data instantly to other online applications and web properties.
Bing Data And Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. After setting up your account with Bing, this information can be used with web traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers website owners the option of a hosted vs self-hosted website. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress version if you are planning to grow a professional business presence online.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic system in the next installment of this series.
Social Media And Social Bookmarking
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site)
You will need to set up your social accounts before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and attract new visitors to your site.
You should have accounts and profiles set up with all the big social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just select the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(You can syndicate your content to loads of social sites. Image source ShareThis.com)
Additional Solutions, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online web platforms and content aggregators that can act as secondary traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some are paid services.
For example, here is a content aggregator that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is a news aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are many different technologies and third-party applications you can add to your traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a configuration strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up third-party site accounts, it’s time to configure your WordPress site.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your WordPress site for traffic is to ensure that your global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important areas.
Configuring Global WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains a powerful and often overlooked traffic notification system …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings Section)
As stated below the Update Services section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you have purposely chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically notify the list of update services entered into the Update Services field
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section contains only one entry …
(Update Services)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress – just add a list of update services to this section …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings on this page can influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could affect someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your website or blog to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The main setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility check box is enabled or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked enables your site to instantly ping the update services list when a new post gets published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, make sure this box is left unchecked …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your content, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings)
Here are some of the ways site’s permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring post permalinks)
We have written a detailed tutorial about using WordPress permalinks here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add almost every kind of functionality imaginable to your site, including traffic generation.
Here are examples of plugin categories and plugins that can improve traffic generation
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your WordPress site for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is completely immune from being attacked by hackers.
(Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
More information:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving your site’s ability to rank better in search engines)
A plugin like Yoast SEO (formerly known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) can improve your SEO. Properly configured, this plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to share your content with members of their own social communities can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(You can add social sharing buttons to your website easily with free or inexpensive plugins)
You can add social sharing to your site easily using free or inexpensive plugins.
Most social share plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of followers), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content sections on your site which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WP Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your site’s traffic.
For example, in addition to options and settings for configuring the design and layout of your site, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve SEO and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics code, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WordPress themes like Graphene (a free theme) can be configured for improved traffic results)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons to your site is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes have built-in social sharing features that can be easily turned on with the click of a button)
Other Areas To Configure For Better Traffic Results
Last but not least in the web traffic system configuration process, are the components that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the situations that can seriously affect your business when more and more people start finding and visiting your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), you need to make sure that your website is found to comply with legal requirements of government agencies that regulate business practices online.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
WordPress Tags & Categories
WordPress post categories & tags help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.
(WordPress categories help search engines better organize and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and categories earlier on, during the Website Planning Phase.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s post tags and post categories have been correctly set up to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external applications find your website content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are different things. HTML site maps provide visitors with a visual map of how your content is structured, while XML sitemaps are mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your site just from an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site results in increased traffic.
404 Page – Don’t Lose Traffic!
When online users type in the wrong web address into their web browser or click on a hyperlink pointing to a page on your site that no longer exists, they are presented with a 404 Not Found page …
(Default WordPress 404 Not Found page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Not Found error page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your web server, there are plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your site has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is publish web content regularly to begin bringing more web traffic organically.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and requires the configuration and integration of various elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website developers months to learn.
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate as much of the process as can be automated. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read the rest of this article, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping small business owners learn how to grow their business online with a WordPress website and proven marketing strategies that are easy and quick to implement.
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